Fandango and Other Stories

by Bryan Karetnyk

  “They say there’s a lot of everything and they’ll be giving it out next week.”

  “But what exactly?”

  Someone authoritative and pompous, with a condescending arch of his brows, asserted that the delegation had arrived from the island of Cuba.

  “And not from Salamanca?”

  “No, from Cuba, Cuba,” said omniscient actresses who were passing.

  “What do you mean, from Cuba?”

  A pun had already been born, and I heard it twice: “To KUBU from Cuba.” Two young girls, running down the stairs as girls do—that is, two at a time—stopped their acquaintances with a shout:

  “Chocolate! Yes, sir!”

  Even the old women had livened up, and so, too, those hunched-over, shortsighted, bespectacled folk who lack any obvious facial hair and always seem insensate in their forever narrow overcoats. A mark of inner equilibrium had appeared in their gaze. Hungry faces, with intense worry about food in their tired eyes, hurried to repeat the news, while some headed directly for the clerical office with the intention of finding out everything.

  A certain time passed in this way, while I loitered on a marble staircase adorned with statues and drank tea in the canteen, sitting at a glass table under a palm tree—there had once been a winter garden in this room. Wondering why the bread smelled of fish, I looked at my hand, saw the scales sticking to it, and remembered the bream that was poking out of my pocket. Having stuffed the bream down more snugly, lest its tail chafe my elbow, I raised my head and saw Afanasy Terpugov, a cook from the Madrid restaurant, whom I had known for a long time. He was a dry, dispirited person with a wandering gaze and a certain affectation in his facial expression; his thin, tightly pursed lips were shaven, and he peered over his spectacles.

  He had on an overcoat that was as long as a chimney and a tight-fitting lambskin hat. Jokingly, this man tugged at the tail of my bream.

  “My congratulations on your supplies!” said Terpugov. “And there was me thinking it was a hatchet. I was afraid I might cut myself, ha-ha!”

  “Oh, hello, Terpugov,” I replied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, now, a friend of mine has been pulling some strings to try to find me a job here in the kitchen or in one of the shops. I’ve stopped by to tell him I’m not interested.”

  “Where have you found work?”

  “What do you mean, where?” said Terpugov. “But of course, you haven’t heard. I’ll let you in on a secret—come to the Madrid tomorrow. I’ve leased the restaurant and I’m opening it. The cooking is top-notch! Well, don’t you remember the time when you were a bit tipsy, you took some of my little rasstegai home with you as a keepsake? And you said to me: ‘I’ll frame them and mount them on the wall!’ Ha-ha! Those were the days! And those Polish kolduny with butter … Well, I won’t keep ragging you like this. In any case, there’ll be an orchestra—the finest you’ll find anywhere. The prices are reasonable, and, what the hell, we’ll play some Spanish dances for you at the grand opening.”

  “But, Terpugov,” I said, choked with amazement, “do you realize what you’re saying? That you alone, against all the rules, have been allowed an undertaking like the Madrid? This, in nineteen twenty-one?”

  Thereupon something happened to me—something like that universally known moment of double vision, when you see two of everything. Something was preventing me from seeing clearly, preventing me from looking directly ahead. Terpugov drifted off, then appeared even farther away, and, although he was standing right beside me, across from the window, I saw him against the background of the window, as though he were in the distance, taking snuff with a thoughtful look about him. He spoke as though addressing not me, but someone off to the side:

  “As you like, but come all the same. Anyway, do give me the bream. I’ll soak it and clean it—I’ll serve it with a little buckwheat and dress it in horseradish and sour cream, you’ll love it! I don’t imagine you even have the firewood.”

  Still enraptured, I rubbed my eyes and regained control over my vision.

  “You’re talking nonsense,” I said in vexation. “But even so, take the bream, I myself can’t cook it. Here, take it!” I repeated, handing over the fish.

  Terpugov examined it carefully, patting its tail and even looking in its mouth.

  “A good fish, nice and plump,” he said, secreting it under his overcoat. “Rest assured. Terpugov knows his business—I’ll be sure to get rid of all the bones. Well, till we meet again! So don’t forget, tomorrow at the Madrid. We open at eight.”

  He doffed his cap, shuffled his feet, and cast me a serious look before disappearing behind the glass door.

  “The poor fellow’s gone crackers!” I said as I left via the staircase, making for the carved doors of the Rose Hall. I had warmed up and was no longer so tormented by hunger. Remembering Terpugov, I smiled and thought: “So the bream has ended up with Terpugov. What a strange fate it’s had!”

  VII.

  The hall’s enormous double door stood half-open. No sooner had I reached it than several members of the senior administration, both with and without briefcases, rushed past me through the door, one after another, peering over the heads of those in front—such was the hurry they were in, doubtless to see something in connection with the Spaniards. I recalled the conversation at the gate, and so I, too, peered in and saw that the great hall was full of people. With a shrug of the shoulders, a sign of my equality, I dignifiedly walked in; as it was rather crowded, I stood somewhat off to the side, observing the goings-on.

  The hall was usually used for clerical work, but now the tables had been moved over to the walls, while the typewriters had vanished. One large table, dressed in a dark-blue cloth, stood closer to the wall farthest from the door, between plate glass windows with a view of the snow-covered river. The praesidium of KUBU sat solemnly along the right end of the table, while along the left was that same ginger-haired man whom I had seen at the gate in a beret and a cloak with a turned-down ermine collar. He sat bolt upright, leaning slightly on the firm back of the chair and taking in the scene with his gaze. His right hand lay directly in front of him on the table, atop some papers, while with his left he casually fingered a golden neck chain adorned with a single pearl. His three traveling companions stood behind him, exuding patience and attention in their bearing and expression. Before the table towered a barricade of leathern and canvas bales, and I was astonished that the administration had allowed them to bring in so many goods.

  Meanwhile, with the utmost attention, I listened to what was being said and whispered in various quarters. The crowd was the usual ration-seeking crowd: doctors, engineers, solicitors, professors, journalists, and a multitude of women. As I soon learned, they had all crowded in, gradually though quickly, attracted by the outlandishness of the delegates.

  The quiddity of “rumor” is the subtlest emanation of a fact that is always true in essence, no matter which monstrous form has been devised for it by our apparatus of perception and dissemination—that is, the mind and its cunning servant, language. And so it was not without a certain curiosity that I listened in. Breathing down the back of my neck, someone said to his neighbor:

  “This Spanish professor is a queer fellow. They say he’s a real character and a most terrific eccentric: he goes about the city in a sedan chair, as though it were the Middle Ages!”

  “But is he really a professor? Do you know what I heard? They say he isn’t quite what he seems!”

  “Well, I never!”

  “What’s one to think?!”

  An old woman in front of me was elbowing her way back so that she could listen to the speakers and take part directly in the discussion.

  “Now, what’s all this? How are we to understand it?” she mumbled with her frog-like mouth, her gray, avaricious eyes glittering mysteriously. She lowered her voice:

  “But listen to me, do you hear? I was told that their documents were checked but the stamp wasn’t the right one …”

/>   I realized that the public nose was at work. But there was no time to listen to the other whisperings, for the committee had demanded the removal of all unauthorized persons.

  Rising to his feet, the Spaniard made a brief movement with his hand.

  “We ask,” he said in a loud, commanding voice, “that everyone be permitted to remain here, since we are glad to be in the company of those for whom we have brought our modest gifts.”

  The interpreter (a writer, who had published several volumes of Spanish lore) proved not to be completely fluent in the language. He translated “we are glad to be” incorrectly as “we ought to be,” which, after elbowing my way to the front, I immediately pointed out.

  “Does the señor know Spanish?” The visitor turned to me with a seductive, serpentine smile, and all of a sudden he stared at me so intently that I began to feel ill at ease. His black and green eyes, with their piercing, steely pupils, fixed me with a look that was reminiscent of an arm with the sleeve coolly rolled up, thrust to the very bottom of a sack by a man implacably groping for a sought-after object.

  “Do you know Spanish?” the foreigner repeated. “Would you care to interpret?”

  “Señor,” I rejoined, “I know Spanish as well as I know Russian, though I have never been to Spain. I know, moreover, English, French, and Dutch; but don’t you already have an interpreter?”

  General crosstalk ensued between me, the Spaniard, the interpreter, and members of the committee, during which it came to light that the interpreter admitted an imperfect knowledge of the language and so willingly yielded his role to me. The Spaniard never once looked at him. Evidently, he wanted me to interpret. The committee, wearying of the commotion, raised no objection. Then, turning to me, the Spaniard introduced himself:

  “Professor Miguel Anna María Pedro Esteban Alonso Bam Gran.” To which I replied in the correct fashion:

  “Alexander Kaur” (my name), after which the meeting resumed its official character.

  At this point I translated in turn the usual exchange of greetings expressed by the committee and the Spaniard, which were composed in the spirit of those times and do not merit a detailed retelling now. Bam Gran then read aloud a list of gifts sent by scholars from the island of Cuba. This inventory elicited general delight. Two wagons of sugar, five thousand kilos of coffee and chocolate, twelve thousand of maize, fifty casks of olive oil, twenty of marmalade, ten of sherry, and one hundred boxes of Manila cigars. Everything had already been weighed and deposited in the storehouses. However, those bales, which lay before the table, contained objects concerning which Bam Gran said only that, with the permission of the rationing committee, he “would have the honor to show the assembly their contents forthwith.”

  No sooner had I translated these words than there came a roar of approval in the hall: they promised a spectacle, or, rather, the continuation of the spectacle that the delegation’s presence had already provided. Everyone, myself included, was overjoyed. We were witnesses to a generous and picturesque gesture, ostentatiously made, as in drawings depicting the arrival of travelers in far-distant lands.

  The Spaniards exchanged glances and began to talk quietly among themselves. One of them, extending a hand toward the bales, suddenly smiled and looked at the crowd amiably.

  “All adults are children,” Bam Gran said to him quite distinctly, so that I caught the words; then, understanding from my face that I had heard him, he leaned in toward me and, gazing into my eyes with the blade of his glittering pupils, whispered:

  In northern wilds, above the sea,

  There stands alone a pine.

  It slumbers there midst snow and ice

  And plaintively it cries.

  It dreams: down on the even plains,

  A land of endless spring;

  A bright-green palm forever now

  Its one and only dream.

  VIII.

  The joke was so mild and subtle—he had only been joking, of course—but I felt as though I had been given a firm handshake, and, with my heart now beating violently, and without even paying attention to how boldly and effortlessly he had imparted in this strange allusion a special meaning to Heine’s poem—a work of infinite meanings—I managed to say only:

  “Is that so? What was it you were trying to express?”

  “We know a thing or two,” he said in his usual tone of voice. “So then, to work, Señor!”

  No sooner had this mood, this moment—like the unexpected plucking of a string—died away amid the hubbub that had arisen around the bales than I was plunged again into my duties, listening intently to Bam Gran’s fitful speech. He spoke of the haste of his departure, apologizing for having brought less than he might otherwise have done. Meanwhile, the Spaniards’ hands, with the sureness of feline paws, flew out from under their cloaks, clutching glittering, narrow knives; having turned over the bales, they cut the ropes, then quickly tore open the leather and canvas. A silence fell. Onlookers crowded around in anticipation of what was to come. The only sound came from behind the door of an adjoining room, where a typewriter clattered telegraphically under an indifferent, dismal hand.

  By now the hall was so tightly crowded with patrons and workers of KUBU that only those standing at the very front could see what was going on. Already the Spaniards had pulled out from one bale a box of short dark candles.

  “Behold!” said Bam Gran, seizing a candle and deftly lighting it. “These are scented candles for freshening the air!”

  He raised the light with his dry, pale hand, and the subtle perfume, which recalled the fragrance of a warm garden, passed through the hall, which was filled with foul-smelling tobacco. Many began to laugh, but a shadow of bewilderment settled on the faces of several scholars. Having failed to hear my translation, these people said:

  “Ah, candles, how lovely! Doubtless there’ll be soap as well!”

  However, disappointment flitted across the majority of faces.

  “If all the gifts are going to be like this …” said a gray-haired man with a ruddy nose to a young lad, who had grown crimson from his overflowing gloom and crossed his arms on his chest, “ … what on earth is going on?”

  The young lad screwed up his eyes scornfully and said:

  “Mmm, quite …”

  Meanwhile, the work continued apace. Another three bales had come apart under the direction of the sharp knives. There appeared lengths of wonderfully colored silks, patterned muslin, white Panama hats, broadcloth and flannel, stockings, gloves, lace, and many other fabrics, on seeing the color and shimmer of which I could only surmise that they were of the finest quality. Cutting open a bale, the Spaniards would extract a piece or a sample, unwrap it, and set it down at their feet. One after another, fabrics rustled as they poured from the Spaniards’ swarthy hands; soon a mountain had formed, as in a shop when the assistants throw down onto the counter all the newest goods and latest patterns. At long last, they were done with the fabrics. The ropes of a new bale were snapped off, and I watched on as seashells spilled out with a dry rattle—red and white corals cascading behind them.

  I stepped back, so vivid were these colors from the seabed among the folds of silks and linens—they had retained the luster of an underwater ray penetrating the green depths. As dusk had begun to set in, the hall was now illuminated with electricity, which set the heaps of gifts even more aglitter.

  “These are very rare shells,” said Bam Gran, “and we would be greatly pleased if you would accept them as a souvenir of our visit and of the far-distant ocean! …”

  He turned to his assistants, hurrying them on with a gesture:

  “Step lively, caballeros! Don’t delay the effect! Señor Kaur, please tell the congregation that we have brought fifty guitars and as many mandolins; we shall show you examples of them presently.”

  Now six of the largest and longest bales came to rest before us upon a dais; unwrapping them, the Spaniards laid bare the palm wood of the strong, narrow crates and cautiously forced them op
en. There, wrapped in cotton wool, lay the new instruments. Taking out the guitars, one after the other, carefully, like sleeping children, the Spaniards wiped them down with silk handkerchiefs and stood them against the table or else laid them on top of the piles of brightly colored fabric. Soon, however, there was nowhere to put them, save for on top of one another, and so the onlookers had to be asked to make way. The neck and soundboard of the guitars were the color of a dark cigar and were decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay—and in places with fine gold engraving.

  A vague clanging accompanied the fuss over the guitars; sometimes the knock of a guitar against wood would elevate the disorderly clangor to a tender harmony.

  Soon the mandolins, also adorned with mother-of-pearl and gold, appeared. Giving off a sharp, metallic ring when people inadvertently touched or knocked into them, these mandolins took up an entire table and all the space underneath it. The business of unpacking them was completed comparatively slowly, and so I had time to scrutinize the faces of the committee members and apprehend their exceedingly tense state.

  Indeed, the proceedings had come to resemble a dramatic scene with a strong decorative aspect. The clerical office, the round loaves of bread, the guitars, the sherry, the telephones, the oranges, the typewriters, the perfumes and silks, the felt boots and velvet cloaks, the vegetable oil and corals formed a strikingly odd mixture, which flouted the institution’s gray tone with the reverberation of strings and the sounds of a foreign tongue that recalled a tropical land. The delegation had entered KUBU, like a comb through hair, forming an admittedly short-lived but vivid and unusual excenter, while the administrative and rationing centers involuntarily yielded to the newcomers in precedence and the nature of their gesture. Now these swarthy, ceremonious eccentrics were masters of the situation, and hospitality did not permit even the slightest hint of a desire to end the scene, which had become the apotheosis of the spontaneity that had pitched its motley camp in a clerical office devoted to “public supply.” Contrary to custom, the business day had come to a halt. The staff had assembled from every direction—from shops, bureaus, agencies, storerooms, the fuel department, the bathhouse, the hairdresser’s, the laundry, from the canteen and duty rooms, from the library and the medical station—and if some did not come, that was only because not even a single leaf of paper could move without them. The would-be recipients, who had come for their rations, delayed getting their supplies, not wanting to miss a rare spectacle for what they saw every day. Several of the sort who were well seasoned and always sniffing around everywhere had by now run off to the various departments to inquire about their chocolate and sherry; this was done in the hope that, having already received their coupons, they would avoid the impending lines.